Life prolonging cancer drugs to be banned because they cost too much (UK)

Thousands of patients with terminal cancer were dealt a blow last night after a decision was made to deny them life prolonging drugs.

The Government's rationing body said two drugs for advanced breast cancer and a rare form of stomach cancer were too expensive for the NHS.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence is expected to confirm guidance in the next few weeks that will effectively ban their use.

The move comes despite a pledge by Nice to be more flexible in giving life-extending drugs to terminally-ill cancer patients after a public outcry last year over 'death sentence' decisions.

Yes....I hear ya....however....I’m one of those who the private insurance company would have loved for me to be taking $10,000 a year RA drugs.....they would have paid a good portion of them....but, since I didn’t believe I really had RA, and opted for bio-ID hormones (and was cured of my ailment).....they won’t pay for those....insurance is screwed up because OF government intervention I believe.

I'm sure you could find hundreds, if not thousands, of examples like this one- health care being rationed in socialist utopias, and the terrible consequences that go with it.

I'd like to think the American people can't be so stupid, that they would throw away their far-superior-to-anywhere-else health system .

I just don't know anymore.

Pray for our nation.

“One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective.”

The purpose of that office is to setup University studies (the same people that do all these studies already), to avoid stuff like this:

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/438238

$3.25 billion a year lining the pockets of surgeons for nothing more than what amounts to a placebo pill.

Lapatinib is used as a treatment for women’s breast cancer in patients who have HER2-positive advanced breast cancer that has progressed after previous treatment with other chemotherapeutic agents, such as anthracycline, taxane-derived drugs, or trastuzumab (Herceptin, Genentech).

A 2006 GSK-supported randomized clinical trial on female breast cancer previously being treated with those agents (anthracycline, a taxane and trastuzumab) demonstrated that administrating lapatinib in combination with capecitabine delayed the time of further cancer growth compared to regime that use capecitabine alone. The study also reported that risk of disease progression was reduced by 51%, and that the combination therapy was not associated with increases in toxic side effects

Dosing. The recommended dose of lapatinib is 1,250 mg (5 tablets) taken orally once daily on Days 1 to 21 continuously in combination with capecitabine 2,000 mg/m2/d (taken orally in 2 doses approximately 12 hours apart) on Days 1 to 14 in a repeating 21-day cycle. Lapatinib should be taken ;1 hour before or after a meal; capecitabine should be taken with food or within 30 minutes after food.

Pricing. Lapatinib is expected to cost approximately $2,900 per month, or approximately $96 per daily dose.

“You’d think decisions like this would prompt a public outcry and have the bureaucrats tarred and feathered.”

The outcry should be that the FDA, PharmaNazi’s & AMA suppress cancer cures and promote very expensive drugs that rarely succeed in ridding the patient of cancer and often kill the patient.

Many suppressed, but successful cancer treatments are available from natural sources, but lack of patentability makes them personna-non-grata in allipathic medicine because there is no money in it.

Where IS the outcry?

The worst aspect is that it will elevate unelected bureaucrats to a God-like status.

Yep. Some day some affirmative action democrat flunkie will be sitting at a grey metal coffee-stained desk looking at your medical record and humming to herself, "eeny-meeny miney-moe. He shall stay and You shall Go." ("Hehehe *cackle!*' as you get plopped on the "rejected" pile.)

This has been going on for quite some time.

And there are people who have sold their homes or cashed in their investments to get the drugs... just to have the National Health kick them off the register.

Their theory being that if they can afford to buy that unapproved medicine... then they are too rich to qualify for the National Health.

And please, learn about the Post Code Lottery... that is just disgusting, too.

Those with political connections will zip to the front of the line.

This happens sometimes now. I remember Mickey Mantle getting a liver transplant that failed and I remember being conflicted. I thought, I like Mickey and he has brought joy to a lot of people, but I also thought, this is not going to work and we are wasting a liver on him.

But it won't be. Those with political connections will zip to the front of the line. Those out of favor will have their paperwork “lost.”

This gives political hacks the power of life and death over us, and will turn us into groveling beggars.

And the bureaucrat that issues the "death sentence" to me or mine will suffer one of his/her own. I can guarantee it.

Election2008 Spoiler, GOP backstaber, Mitt Romney chortles,
as he inflicts his socialized medicine (HillaryCARE=ROmneyCARE)
upon the Massachusetts citizens without any of their votes (like he did everything else).

"Hospital patients 'left in agony'"
"Patients were allegedly left screaming in pain and drinking from flower vases on a nightmare hospital ward.
Between 400 and 1,200 more people died than would have been expected at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust over three years, a damning Healthcare Commission report said.
The watchdog's investigation found inadequately trained staff who were too few in number, junior doctors left alone in charge at night and patients left without food, drink or medication as their operations were repeatedly cancelled.
Patients were left in pain or forced to sit in soiled bedding for hours at a time and were not given their regular medication, the Commission heard.
Receptionists with no medical training were expected to assess patients coming in to A&E, some of whom needed urgent care.
Sir Bruce Keogh, medical director of the NHS, said there had been a "gross and terrible breach" of patients' trust and a "complete failure of leadership".
The Healthcare Commission's chairman Sir Ian Kennedy said the investigation followed concerns about a higher than normal death rate at the Trust, which senior managers could not explain.
He said: "The resulting report is a shocking story. Our report tells a story of appalling standards of care and chaotic systems for looking after patients. These are words I have not previously used in any report.
"There were inadequacies in almost every stage of caring for patients. There was no doubt that patients will have suffered and some of them will have died as a result."
Julie Bailey, 47, was so concerned about the care being given to her 86-year-old mother Bella at Stafford Hospital that she and her relatives slept in a chair at her bedside for eight weeks.
She said: "We saw patients drinking out of..."

"Paramedics told: 'Let accident victims die if they want to' in new row over patient rights (UK)"
Health Service paramedics have been told not to resuscitate terminally-ill patients who register on a controversial new database to say they want to die.
It has been set up by the ambulance service in London for hundreds of people who have only a few months to live so that they may register their 'death wishes' in advance.
It is believed to be the first in the country, but other trusts around the country are expected to follow suit to comply with Government guidelines which state that patients' wishes should be taken into account, even at the point of death.
Patients' groups and doctors have welcomed the scheme, but it has met opposition from pro-life groups who say it violates the sanctity of life.
The system would come into play if a cancer patient, for example, was in serious pain and rang 999 for help to alleviate the suffering.
But if the paramedics arrived and the patient was close to death, he or she would not be resuscitated if such a request was registered on the database.
This would also be the case if a patient on the database was being transferred between hospitals, and had a heart attack.
Dominica Roberts from the Pro-Life Alliance said: 'This is very sad and very dangerous. It's another step along the slippery slope, at the bottom of which is euthanasia as we see in Holland. 'Paramedics should be there to save lives. They should not be there to let patients die. The medical profession should not agree with someone's belief that their life is worthless.'"

"National Health Preview - The Massachusetts debacle, coming soon to your neighborhood."
"Three years ago, the former Massachusetts Governor had the inadvertent good sense to create the "universal" health-care program that the White House and Congress now want to inflict on the entire country.
It is proving to be instructive, as Mr. Romney's foresight previews what President Obama, Max Baucus, Ted Kennedy and Pete Stark are cooking up for everyone else.
In Massachusetts's latest crisis, Governor Deval Patrick and his Democratic colleagues are starting to move down the path that government health plans always follow when spending collides with reality -- i.e., price controls.
As costs continue to rise, the inevitable results are coverage restrictions and waiting periods. It was only a matter of time.

They're trying to manage the huge costs of the subsidized middle-class insurance program that is gradually swallowing the state budget.
The program provides low- or no-cost coverage to about 165,000 residents, or three-fifths of the newly insured, and is budgeted at $880 million for 2010, a 7.3% single-year increase that is likely to be optimistic.
The state's overall costs on health programs have increased by 42% (!) since 2006.

What really whipped along RomneyCare were claims that health care would be less expensive if everyone were covered.
But reducing costs while increasing access are irreconcilable issues.
Mr. Romney should have known better before signing on to this not-so-grand experiment, especially since the state's "free market" reforms that he boasts about have proven to be irrelevant when not fictional.
Only 21,000 people have used the "connector" that was supposed to link individuals to private insurers."

A Very Sick Health Plan; Bay State’s ‘Grand Experiment’ Fails [RomneyCare]
"The Daily News Record, Harrisonburg, Va. - 2009-03-31 "
"For folks increasingly leery of President Obama’s plan to radically overhaul America’s health-care system,
or 17 percent of the nation’s economy, all this could hardly have come at a better time —
that is, fiscal troubles aplenty within Repubican Mitt Romney’s brainchild, Massachusetts’ “grand experiment” in “universal” health care."

"Initiated on Mr. Romney’s gubernatorial watch in 2006, this “experiment” has fallen on hard times, and predictably so.
Even though the Bay State commenced its program with a far smaller percentage of uninsured residents than exists nationwide,
“RomneyCare” is threatening to bankrupt the state. Budgeted for Fiscal Year 2010 at $880 million,
or 7.3 percent more than a year ago, this plan, aimed at providing low- or no-cost health coverage to roughly 165,000 residents,
has caused Massachusetts’ overall expenditures on all health-related programs to jump an astounding 42 percent since 2006.

So what does Mr. Romney’s successor, Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick, propose as a remedy for these skyrocketing costs?
Well, whaddya think? The standard litany of prescriptions (no pun intended) — price controls and spending caps, for a start, and then, again predictably, waiting periods and limitations on coverage.
As in Europe and Canada, so too in Massachusetts. And, we feel certain, everyone from Mr. Romney to Mr. Patrick said, “It would never happen here.”
But then, such things are inevitable when best-laid plans, with all their monstrous costs, run smack-dab into fiscal reality.

"Dem Congresswoman Admits Obama Health Care Plan Will Destroy Private Health Insurance Industry"

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